Negativity bias is normal (and you can work around it)
Have you ever gotten an email and felt a whole cascade of emotion go off in your body, almost like you’re watching a horror movie and you can tell it’s about to be the super scary part? Maybe your palms started sweating or your chest got a little tight. Maybe you felt your heart rate kick up a notch. You might have taken in a sudden, sharp breath or you might have found yourself holding your breath. You might even have started grinding your teeth without realizing it. No matter the exact response that happens in your body, it’s the sensation that something is wrong or is about to go wrong. This particular feeling used to happen to me a lot, actually, back in my corporate days.
Much like that horror movie, even though part of me knew it was just a screen with stuff on it, another part of me was like OH NO - THIS IS BAD.
The human brain developed to scan for threats. This made a lot of sense when we lived in tribes and the biggest dangers to our existence were things like a lion that wants to eat us, getting separated from our tribe, and eating a plant that turned out to be incompatible with human consumption. Constantly scanning our environments for threats and having a brain that remembered what might be dangerous was useful. It kept our species alive. It’s also worth mentioning that the kinds of threats we were scanning for were generally the life or death variety, whether that was a physical threat like a predator or an emotional threat, like being rejected from the tribe at a time when humans couldn’t survive on their own.
But here’s what it looks like now. You’re at your desk. You’re doing your job. You get an email with a little red exclamation point on it, and your brain is like, A THREAT. Especially if that email happens to be from your boss or an important client or it has a subject line with emotionally significant language in it. Of course, your brain tends to use your own vernacular, so it probably sounds a lot more like this inside your head: "oh no.", “are you f*cking kidding me?” or “I don’t have time for this sh*t” or “I can’t handle this right now.”
When your brain sees the email and identifies it as a potential problem (no matter the language it uses) it kicks off a reaction. While you may consciously know that the email is not actually a threat or even truly a problem, part of your brain doesn’t register that. It has decided that the email is dangerous in some way, and the more it thinks that, the more it sees evidence for that (thanks to our old friend, confirmation bias). And what does the brain do when it thinks something is dangerous? It prepares to fight, flee, or freeze. That’s why sometimes, you get an email, recoil, and actually close the laptop and maybe even walk away. Or you spew out a string of feisty curse words. Or you literally just stare at the computer as though that will somehow change things.
All of this is to explain, all day long, your brain is scanning for the negative. Not because your brain is bad or wrong, but because it evolved to do this as a way of keeping you safe from harm. And the more it thinks life is dangerous, the more danger it sees. When clients learn about this, they tend to think that their brain is being an assh*le or that something is wrong with them because their mind is so incredibly negative. But this is actually your brain functioning properly and trying to keep you alive. It might feel malicious, but it’s actually not.
But if you don’t know that this is what your brain is doing, and that it evolved to do this as a way to protect you from potential death, then it can seem like this information is all real and unbiased, just your brain reporting the facts. You think it’s just true. But it’s actually a deeply biased perspective.
As an example of how much weight your brain gives to the negative, consider this: in relationship studies, it can take five positive comments to balance out just one negative comment. You’ve probably experienced this yourself, when you receive a ton of praise at work but there’s that one piece of constructive feedback that you become wildly obsessed with. In moments like this, we can wonder, what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I enjoy my success? But nothing’s wrong with you. Your brain does this because it’s working. And you can still learn to enjoy your success when you approach this task with an understanding of the human brain and its natural tendencies.
And that wording is key, because enjoying your success *is* a task. It’s something you need to do on purpose. This flies in the face of so much of what we’re taught as kids, but I find it to be true, especially for high-achievers. We have a lot of practice at working hard, being strategic, and getting things done against all odds. We don’t always have a lot of practice at enjoying our success. In fact, we usually try to move on as quickly as possible so that we can start another task. While I understand this habit, it’s worth unlearning.
Since our brain has a natural negativity bias, it’s important to cultivate positivity on purpose. Now I want to be clear that I’m not talking about positive thinking, silver linings, or even gratitude practices, and I want you to specifically avoid asking yourself what you “should” like, because nothing kills delight like the word “should.”
What I am talking about is intentionally enjoying what is going well and collecting lists of positive data to balance out our brain’s natural inclination to see what’s not working or what could go wrong later.
How do we do this? It’s really simple. And, bonus, it’s actually more realistic than your brain’s default thinking patterns, since those default thinking patterns are actually quite biased.
When the brain is stuck in negativity bias, it’s easy for it to seem like nothing is working and everything is terrible, but that’s never the case. Instead, ask your brain what is working, what is going well, what you do like. Get as specific and detailed as you can. Really push yourself to come up with compelling data.
Once you list what is working, you will begin to feel better. From the place of seeing what is working, you can go back to the things that aren’t working and figure out ways to solve them. We have our best ideas and do our best work when we come from this place. When we try to take action from our negativity-biased view, we often don’t come up with the best solutions. But you have to do this on purpose, because on its own, the brain tends to loop on the negative and get stuck in a vicious cycle that seems like it’s “just reality.”
What have you been struggling with? Is it possible that some negativity bias has been at play there? Try creating a list of positive data about this situation before you try to figure out what to do. You’ll be amazed at what you come up with when you cultivate positivity on purpose before trying to solve problems.
Want some customized support managing your own negativity bias or teaching your team to think differently? I’m currently accepting 1:1 coaching clients for August and September start dates. I’ve also got a few spots open for corporate speaking engagements. Learn more here.